Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 12:45:17 EDT From: "somewhere, under the ground..." Subject: EXERCISE: Fear and Trembling... Well, well, well...we are in the midst of our halloweenies contest, and you still don't have an idea? (you could always do a piece about a writer facing a deadline without an idea, and the agonies of that position, but perhaps that is a bit too recursive for you? a bit too far into the hall of mirrors, reflecting each other each other each other...:) Let's try an experiment. First, pick a number from one to six. 1. Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things under ground, and much more in the skies. Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-15), 1.3.6, tr. Peter Motteux and John Ozell. 2. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish," Unpopular Essays (1950). 3. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear. Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish," Unpopular Essays (1950). 4. Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings. Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605-06), 1.3.137. 5. Horror causes men to clench their fists, and in horror men join together. Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939), 9.3, tr. Lewis Galantiere. 6. Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956), 364. So there you have a little bit of a quote about fear...and maybe you could pick again? One to twelve this time...some of the flavors of horror and fear, as given by the Microsoft Bookshelf thesaurus: 1. fear, healthy fear, dread, awe, respect 2. abject fear, cowardice 3. fright, stage fright 4. wind up, funk, blue funk 5. terror, mortal terror, panic terror 6. state of terror, intimidation, trepidation, alarm, false alarm 7. shock, flutter, flap, tailspin, agitation 8. fit, fit of terror, scare, stampede, panic, panic attack, spasm 9. flight, sauve qui peut 10. the creeps, horror, horripilation, hair on end, cold sweat, blood turning to water 11. consternation, dismay, hopelessness 12. defense mechanism, fight or flight, repression, escapism, avoidance [The Original Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Americanized Version) is licensed from Longman Group UK Limited. Copyright c 1994 by Longman Group UK Limited. All rights reserved.] You probably got several words there. Pick one of them, and think about that particular shiver in the back of the neck, that specific clench in the abdomen, that lovely pasty shade of fear...make yourself remember when you felt that horrified. What exactly had happened? What did your mouth feel like? How about the back of your hand? Your toes? [horripilation, incidentally, is "bristling of ... body hair, as from fear or cold; goose bumps" from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright c 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation. All rights reserved.] Now, imagine that your quote was on a little brass plate (or maybe nicely framed, waiting to catch your eye? how about embodied somehow in another character? perhaps simply floating in the shared knowledge and understanding of our reality, waiting to be reinvented?) So there you are, facing your horror (or running from it?) and the words, or at least the sense (or nonsense?), of your quote slaps you hard in the cowardice and stiffens your spine... (pssst? Make a list of five ways that your quote and your fears go together--and conflict...) Now, put it all together. Imagine a character out there, with fear. What kind of activity are they engaged in? How many other people are helping or hindering them (don't forget your antagonist!) Put them into that scene, and make us believe it, make us live it. Then how does the horror creep in? Or does it leap from a shadowed alley, drop out of the blue blue sky, or merely slink along on soundless paws, silently pursuing the victim with flickers on the edge of sight? As the horror grows in power, how does the character struggle? Do we try to tell people, only to find that they don't believe that the kindly old parish priest doesn't seem to have a shadow? Do we look around in fright, then start to run, and run, and run...? (maybe two or three scenes here, with the protagonist investing more and more in fighting the horror, and the horror growing stronger, more pervasive?) Finally, with the life, liberty, honor, and sanity of the protagonist at stake (or at least whatever stakes you want to put up...not in, just ante up)--does the protagonist face their fear? Or does the horror remove its face, revealing a truly gruesome gaping hole? What is the climax, the point toward which your horror story builds? [you put the right foot in, you shake it all around, then drop it in the pot... you put the left foot in, and stir up the piranha, then let them strip it to the bone... that's how you do the horror stew?] write 'em up and sub 'em at the Halloweenies Roast, rat here! tink For more about the Halloweenies, see http://web.mit.edu/mbarker/www/hall97/hall.html ------- End of Forwarded Message